End Sexual Abuse in ICE Facilities

The afternoon before she was supposed to be deported to Mexico, “Jane Doe” was moved to a dark cell in an unfamiliar part of the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Houston she had been detained at for three months. Two other women were placed in the cell with her. Around midnight, three men entered the dark cell and proceeded to beat and rape the women. Hours later, before they could talk to any guard or official, all three women were placed on a bus and deported to Mexico. Several weeks later, Jane Doe found out she was pregnant, with one of the rapists being the father. She delivered the child, enduring life-threatening complications during her pregnancy and delivery.

In another ICE-run detention facility in El Paso, a woman referred to as “E” was being escorted from the medical unit to her barrack when a guard stopped her in a security camera “blind spot.” This was not the first or last time that guards stopped her in this blind spot: guards systemically assaulted detainees in these blind spots, forcibly kissing and groping them. This guard told E that “If she behaved, he would help her be released.” After a year of these sexual abuses, E came forward to law enforcement agencies with her allegations against the guards. When her story was picked up by the news organizations ProPublica and the Texas Tribune, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of the Inspector General (OIG) and Federal Bureau of Investigation opened investigations into the abuse. The OIG, which oversees ICE, ordered ICE not to deport E during the investigation. As E assisted the OIG and FBI in their investigations, she said she feared for her safety because guards and other inmates were threatening her for speaking out.

Out of concerns for her safety, E’s lawyers requested that she be granted permission to stay in an immigrant shelter in El Paso. Instead, three days after her lawyers made the request, the OIG reversed its order, allowing ICE to deport E. Within hours, ICE deported E to Mexico, where she faced death threats from a drug cartel. E’s deportation cost investigators their key witness and could result in E’s murder.

ICE claims that it has a zero-tolerance policy towards sexual assault and rape. However, Jane Doe and E are far from isolated cases. Not only is there systemic sexual abuse of detainees in facilities overseen by ICE (meaning both governmental and private facilities), but ICE seems to resist any measures that could help mitigate sexual abuse in its facilities. From 2010 to 2016, there were 14,700 allegations of sexual assault made against ICE by detainees. Only 172 of those cases were ever investigated — or 1.17% of the allegations made. Further, many of these allegations involved ICE officers and private contractors. The Intercept received data from a government information request on 1,224 sexual abuse complaints made against ICE. 59% of these complaints listed an ICE officer or contractor as the perpetrator, and 12% more said that a guard witnessed the assault or was made aware of it. Out of these 1,224 cases, only 2% were ever investigated.

To be explicitly clear, it’s not that ICE isn’t finding 98-99% of allegations to be false, it’s that they are doing nothing 98-99% of the time when someone reports sexual assault or rape. While victims are supposed to be able to contact outside officials such as their consulates or the OIG along with a non-facility party to report abuses, abusers silence victims with threats of deportation should they speak out, which can be a matter of life and death for many migrants.

Data sourced from: The Intercept

ICE has passed some measures with the intent to combat sexual abuse in its facilities. In 2014, ICE adopted the DHS Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) in its facilities to eliminate sexual abuse in detention centers, although it wasn’t until 2019 that 97% of the average daily population at ICE facilities was covered by PREA. Despite PREA’s passage, the cases in Houston and El Paso illustrate that systemic issues persist because policies like PREA are not adhered to.

ICE also seems to undercut reforms like PREA. For instance, PREA requires that independent, third-party auditors examine all sexual abuse cases in each facility every three years. For their 2017 audits, ICE contracted the private company Nakamoto Group, raising numerous conflicts of interest. If Nakamoto did not approve ICE facilities in their audits, then ICE could simply contract other companies in the future. While ICE and Nakamoto claimed there was no conflict of interest, Nakamoto’s website states that it will “ensure” their contractors’ “federal funding is not jeopardized due to PREA deficiencies.”

The OIG found that Nakamoto conducted insufficient investigations into each facility in its 2017 audit, with Nakamoto failing to interview non-English speakers, filing reports that were 90% shorter than DHS mock-audits, and finding no notable sexual abuse issues in facilities that had very public cases of sexual abuse being investigated. The OIG warned that Nakamoto “has no credibility because of the volume of problems it has failed to uncover at multiple facilities over multiple years.”

Erica Gammill, a specialist in monitoring immigrant detention centers’ handling of sexual abuse investigations, stated that while ICE has adopted reforms such as PREA, these policies are rarely implemented. “Unfortunately,” Gammill is quoted saying, “what we’ve seen is the policies that exist are not being placed into practice.” In short, ICE may have enacted reforms, but doesn’t carry them out, failing to solve systemic issues with their reporting process, victim protection, and audits by third parties.

The rapes and sexual assaults of Jane Doe and E resulted from ICE’s failure to implement reforms that would create safer facilities. Had there been an effective reporting process in place that brought in independent investigators for every case, Jane Doe and E may never have suffered the torture that they did. Even further, without the larger systems that allow 98-99% of sexual abuse reports to go uninvestigated, there would not be endemic levels of sexual assault in the first place.

PREA hasn’t been enough though. ICE has failed to make any meaningful difference in lowering total sexual abuse cases. The reforms have failed to change anything because ICE has too much control over investigations into allegations against itself, such as one case where multiple guards and a lieutenant, a high ranking officer who holds sway over the treatment and deportation of detainees, were accused. The guards and officer told the victim that because the abusers were in such high positions of power, no one would believe her allegations. No staff did believe her, she was deported, and her case was dismissed despite other women coming forward. During investigations, victims who report sexual abuse must be released, granted a U Visa so they can stay in the U.S. while their case is being investigated, and live outside the facility in a place of their choosing.

Historically, law enforcement agencies investigating themselves has only resulted in insufficient, ineffective investigations and continued abuses, and ICE is no different. Impartial and independent prosecutors like the FBI need to be granted oversight and complete control over investigations into sexual abuse allegations made against ICE guards and contractors. Investigators would also need the ability to block any deportations. Similar reforms for law enforcement have been made, such as New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s 2015 executive order establishing that the state Attorney General would investigate all cases where the police killed an unarmed individual, taking investigative power away from local prosecutors. After seeing promising results, the New York state government codified Cuomo’s executive order into law five years later. Momentum for similar independent investigators for ICE has grown with support coming from Congress. In 2017, 71 members of Congress signed a letter calling for a special committee of investigators, establishment of investigative processes, and for the public release of all documents related to sexual abuse in ICE detention facilities. Until ICE solves these systemic issues, sexual abuse in its facilities is not going to go away. Luckily, change is occurring across the country.

With the recent inauguration of President Joseph Biden, the time is now to advocate for these reforms. Although Biden has a troubling history when it comes to immigration, serving as Vice President in an administration that set record numbers of deportations and oversaw sexual abuse, he is currently facing pressure from his party and supporters for police and immigration detention reform, which can be leveraged to enact these policy changes that would curb sexual abuse in ICE facilities. The ultimate goal is to end immigration detention, but these reforms can protect detainees until then. Once ICE does not have the power to sweep allegations of sexual abuse against it under the rug or out of the country, we will begin to see justice for victims of sexual abuse.